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Connected EducationPreparing for the Digital Campus

e-BookConnected Education: Preparing for the Digital Campus 2

The Modern Student – born into a life of technology

Today, most students have never experienced life without the internet or smartphones. This reality is reflected on campus where digital learning processes and experiences are enhancing traditional textbooks and upending conventional classroom teaching methods. Online lessons, testing and assessments are now part of most curricula. Laptops, tablets and smartphones have become primary instruction tools for students, who are downloading an increasing number of online apps to enhance their digital learning experience.

Professors and lecturers alike rely on robust, reliable Wi-Fi across their campus to access the full range of teaching tools available to them.

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The Digital Classroom: Evolution of technology in Higher Education Changing realities for students and learning

Higher education institutions are undergoing a digital transformation. Technology is fueling the transformation, driving the education evolution by enabling more personalized and dynamic learning experiences, with a focus on student success. Many on this transformation journey compare their campus to a ‘smart city’ and the need to provide the underlying technologies that support Internet of Things (IoT). Innovative classroom instruction paradigms, dormitories, lecture halls, labs, and athletic complexes must all be on the network to provide the ubiquitous connectivity students and staff expect.

For anyone who follows student technology usage research from the Educause Center for Analysis and Research (ECAR), it will come as no surprise that more than 50% of students incoming from high school have used technology devices in high school. And, once in a higher education environment, an overwhelming majority of students utilize multiple personal devices

including smartphones, laptops and tablets, to accomplish their academic work. Further, more than 85% of the respondents believe that these devices are important to their academic success1.

Mobile device usage enables the evolution of education, freeing students to adopt learning environments that work for them in their current situation. The blended learning2 model combines classroom and online learning to give students more control over the time, pace and place of their instruction. The importance of blended learning is now second to the flipped classroom model in which students watch video lectures on their own and then attend class for discussions and collaborative activities. According to the ECAR research, the majority of respondents report that a blended learning environment is the dominant experience, however, when you analyze different student demographics, the trend to more online, self-paced learning is preferred (see figure 1)3.

1 Educause Center for Analysis and Research (ECAR), Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology, 2019

2 The Educause definition of “blended” is from the work of Means, Bakia, and Murphy, who contend that the forms of blended learning “encompass all of the middle ground in the spectrum between fully face-to-face and fully online instruction.” See Jeffrey Pomerantz, Malcolm Brown, and D. Christopher Brooks, Foundations for a Next Generation Digital Learning Environment: Faculty, Students, and the LMS, research report (Louisville, CO: ECAR, January 2018); Barbara Means, Marianne Bakia, and Robert Murphy, Learning Online: What Research Tells Us About Whether, When and How (New York: Routledge, 2014).

3 Educause Center for Analysis and Research (ECAR), Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology, 2019

All respondents

Completelyface-to-face

Blended

Mostlyface-to-face

Mostlyonline

Half-and-half

Percentage of respondents

0% 25% 50% 75% 100%

Completelyonline

Work 40 or more hours per week

Independent, with dependents

Married or in a domestic partnership

Have a physical and a learning disability

Age 25 and over

Figure 1: Student learning environment preference based on demographic factors

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Despite the importance of device usage for academic success, students have seen little improvement in the network technologies that support these devices. While it is important to note that the most improved area is in the student housing/dormitory domains, (see figure 2)4 educational institutions are still far below what is realized in classroom/instructional spaces as well as in the library. In fact, one respondent in the ECAR study was quoted as saying:

“Please make Wi-Fi more consistent in the dorms!! It is frustrating to have to walk to the library just to do one assignment.”

What all this means is that students require a reliable Wi-Fi network for their academic success. Institutions need to commit to the professional development instructors need to create a learning environment where their students can thrive.

Reliability of access to Wi-Fi in campus libraries

Reliability of access to Wi-Fi inclassroom / instructional spaces

Ease of login to Wi-Fi network(s)provided by the institution

Reliability of access to Wi-Fi in studenthousing / dormitories

Reliability of access to Wi-Fi iin outdoor spaces

100%

80

2017 2018 2019

60

40

20

0%

Figure 2: Student survey - percentage of respondents that rated Wi-Fi access as ‘good’ or ‘excellent’

4

“Please make Wi-Fi more consistent in the dorms!! It is frustrating to have to walk to the library just to do one assignment.”

4 Educause Center for Analysis and Research (ECAR), Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology, 2019

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The role of technologyAdvanced technology on campus creates new ways for students to learn, and changes how teachers plan and deliver the curriculum. It also provides the digital tools for IT departments to simplify operations, better comply with regulations, and deliver a safer environment for students. For example HVAC systems, smart lighting, sprinkler systems, bathroom sensors, surveillance cameras, and door locks are IoT devices that require reliable connectivity everywhere on campus.

An important technology capability is to enable user mobility. Mobility requires connectivity anywhere, and goes beyond offering Wi-Fi in the lecture hall. It requires

a seamless experience and connectivity needs to be provided everywhere on campus, including residence halls, science labs, gymnasiums, libraries, and outdoor facilities. Wi-Fi networks need to extend across the entire campus property, but they also need to deliver good performance to support higher densities of wireless users with bandwidth-hungry applications, especially in the classrooms due to BYOD learning initiatives, digital testing and new immersive learning applications.

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Is your network ready? Digital learning requires a WLAN infrastructure that can handle a large influx of mobile devices and the bandwidth-hungry applications running on them. There are several things you can do to prepare for this:

• Plan for density: Students bring multiple mobile devices to school. Adding faculty and staff devices, classroom tools like projectors and printers, connected lab equipment, and all sorts of new IoT devices, means planning for density is planning for success.

• Assess WLAN bandwidth requirements: Determine what is required to support the faculty teaching style, including mobile devices. For example, if instructors expect to use video-based teaching aids that stream video to multiple devices, a WLAN network capable of supporting multiple, high quality video streams will be required. An HD-quality video stream uses 4 Mb/s of bandwidth per user and interactive learning games require multi-megabits of bandwidth per user.

• Handle bandwidth needs with Wi-Fi 5 or Wi-Fi 6 technology: Gigabit Wi-Fi devices are already available to students. Adopting Wi-Fi 5 or Wi-Fi 6 technology, enables faster data rates and multiple concurrent downstream communications to multiple wireless devices. Wi-Fi 6 also enables concurrent upstream communications. Both technologies provide better support for a higher density of users, devices and applications.

• Eliminate roaming issues: As users roam between access points, their devices can get stuck on an AP instead of associating with a closer one that has a stronger signal, which drains battery life and degrades performance. The ideal network infrastructure should eliminate this so that older generation devices or disproportional distribution of users don’t drag down the network.

• Adjust LAN access to support new generation access points: Wi-Fi 5 or Wi-Fi 6 APs typically generate an aggregated throughput above 1 Gb/s. To avoid bottlenecks and cabling rework, upgrade to access switches that support 2.5 Gb/5 Gb ports (with PoE) and 10 Gb, 25 Gb or 40 Gb uplinks.

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Alcatel-Lucent OmniAccess Stellar WLANThe Alcatel-Lucent OmniAccess® Stellar WLAN product line meets all these demands, and more. Its next generation access points with distributed intelligence (controller-less) deliver enterprise-grade connectivity, with operational manageability creating a new paradigm in wireless networking that’s efficient, secure, simple and affordable. And with our local, personalized approach, a tailored solution can be built to suit every learning environment.

The OmniAccess Stellar WLAN solution offers:

• Simplicity: Leveraging the latest technologies, it is simple to deploy and scalable, while offering high-speed Wi-Fi.

• Performance: Distributed intelligent architecture eliminates the controller bottleneck for better performance and high availability.

• User centricity: Easy to connect to, leveraging automatic user profiles, provide an exceptional and secure user experience for students, teachers and visitors.

• IoT readiness: Unique IoT enablement technology, securely and automatically connect any device.

• Analytics capability: Smart analytics monitor and control applications, help analyze students’ behavior and enable proactive network enhancements.

• Unified management: Native, unified management for LAN and WLAN with a cloud enabled management platform that provides consistent security for wired and wireless users, individual quality of service and even time of day restrictions.

• Cost-effective evolution: The innovative controllerless technology reduces the cost of the solution and is easy to expand by simply adding more APs.

• Optional location-based services (LBS): Enabled by BLE capabilities in the APs, LBS provides more services to students/visitors such as indoor wayfinding, class attendance, retail advertising, contextual information about buildings, objects, and art, as well as enabling advanced analytics to understand people flow and occupation of school areas.

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ConclusionFor many students, the way a school integrates high performance Wi-Fi into the campus environment can be just as important as their favorite classes, or the structure of the curriculum. Students today don’t remember a time before the internet. They expect an experience like at home, where their devices connect automatically and seamlessly. They expect to be able to connect with any device, anywhere, in and around the school, whether it’s to communicate, be entertained, or to access educational resources.

In addition to student expectations, a campus network must also meet the technology requirements of faculty, staff and IT departments. When designing an efficient and cost-effective campus network, it is important to:

• Understand the limits of the existing network: Objectively analyze and evaluate the capabilities of the existing network infrastructure and plan a gradual upgrade to ensure that it meets the expectations of faculty, students, staff, and the community.

• Deliver a high-performance network: Provide a WLAN infrastructure that can handle a large influx of mobile devices and bandwidth-hungry applications.

• Ensure the LAN does not become a bottleneck: Deploy MultiGig technology in the access switches to avoid additional cabling and increase the bandwidth available.

• Enable pervasive mobility: Ensure that all devices coming into the school environment get their share of network resources with connectivity everywhere and the same quality of experience (QoE) over wired and wireless networks, leveraging simplified device on-boarding.

• Ensure the network is IoT friendly: Simplify the connection of IoT devices, while keeping the network secure allows the district to embrace new safety/security devices and automation technologies.

• Allow for simplified operations: Build and operate a robust network, with a single management system and use virtual networks for unique requirements, rather than separate, dedicated networks.

• Offer in-depth security: Provide not only firewalls, but protection at every level, for users, devices, applications and the network itself.

e-BookConnected Education: Preparing for the Digital Campus

www.al-enterprise.com The Alcatel-Lucent name and logo are trademarks of Nokia used under license by ALE.To view other trademarks used by affiliated companies of ALE Holding, visit: www.al-enterprise.com/en/legal/trademarks-copyright. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. The information presentedis subject to change without notice. Neither ALE Holding nor any of its affi liates assumes any responsibilityfor inaccuracies contained herein. © Copyright 2019 ALE International, ALE USA Inc. All rights reserved in allcountries. DID19112202en (December 2019)

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Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise’s OmniAccess Stellar access points are part of a comprehensive portfolio of networking solutions including comprehensive LAN switching, network management, analytics, and security.

To find out more about the Alcatel-Lucent OmniAccess Stellar WLAN solution, visit www.al-enterprise.com/en/stellar-mobility-wifi